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Travel in Europe

European countries have a cultural heritage of outstanding value. However, a wide part of the European population is not fully aware of this richness. This implies that a significant source of knowledge (and related business) is not adequately exploited. Travel in Europe intends to employ the latest Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in order to promote the European heritage to a wide audience.

The project intends to promote a variety of competences: history, art,languages, geography (the Europe and cities map as a constant reference in the user interface) and skills (ability to extract meaningful and useful – for the game, but also for culture – information from text and images, ability to interpret maps to move in the European and the cities’ spaces, ability to accomplish cultural tasks, such as the interpretation of a picture).

The Travel in Europe online environment will be accessible as a simple website and will allow users to live their own personal, compelling experiences in some European cities. The basic interface will be a map of Europe. Travel in Europe users (players) will make a travel across some European cities in order to achieve a specific goal, e.g. solve a cultural quiz, discover a cultural secret, etc. Players will move in a faithfully reconstructed 3D environment and at each city will face some trials, in order to get cues to achieve the final goal. Trials will be simple games/quizzes about the local heritage.

Through this constructivistic pedagogical approach (i.e. through “learn by doing”, by situating the learner’s knowledge acquisition in concrete experiences, such as a game, or an exploration of a world), we intend to divulgate and promote knowledge of cultural heritage also attracting a demographic traditionally averse to pursuing cultural activities. These people are fond of videogames, chats and messaging.

Travel in Europe intends to “speak their language” to provide them highly qualified cultural contents. So, we do not intend to subtract them time to their traditional study. Rather, we intend to exploit young people’s (but also adults’ – in a life-long learning perspective) enthusiasm towards new technologies in order to make them live culturally meaningful experiences.

Working meeting in Maribor - 13th & 14th March 2008

Travel in Europe - presentation of PC game

Visitors to “Travel in Europe”, the virtual world constructed in 3D space ,were able to travel to some European cities where they encountered various tests formed as quizzes, games and questions and thus gain new knowledge on European culture, major sights and European cultural heritage. All this is based on personal experience. The “Travel in Europe” PC game has been based on the universal approach to the evolution of human culture, thus stimulating cognitive processes in an individual.

Slovenian representative in the project is Maribor, the city that, together with its partners, will hold the title of European Capital of Culture 2012.

The “Travel in Europe” Project has been supported by the European Commission – EACEA and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia. Virtualisation of Maribor has been made possible in cooperation with the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Maribor.